Interview With Graham Hill Of Treehugger

The product is a ceramic cup. I always loved a particular deli take-out cup in New York and one day got to thinking about how such a great design might be memorialized since I saw it as a true New York icon. I was doing ceramic work at the time so I came up with the idea of replicating it in ceramic. I built prototypes and then negotiated an exclusive license to make it. Working with the help of my girlfriend, Olga Sasplugas, we have been able to get it in over 70 design/gift/museum stores such as MOMA, New York City Store, The Future Perfect, Mxyplyzyk and Alphabets. It’s done very well for us. I think it works because the cup means a lot to New Yorkers and it’s one of few classy and useful souvenirs. The site is http://www.wearehappytoserveyou.com .

We’d like to keep our other sustainable projects top secret for the time being but in short, they are all sustainable designs with sleek, modern aesthetics and are being manufactured by ethical factories.

Tell me about your site.

TreeHugger has been something that has been germinating in my mind for many, many years. I see the environmental degradation of our planet as a serious problem and I believe that it will take all sorts of approaches for us to get things back on track. Here’s mine:

We believe there are a ton of people like ourselves: shallow and lazy but with hearts in the right place. There are two main factors that we believe prevent sustainability from crossing over into the mainstream.

The Granola Factor. We love the hippies. They have been the backbone of the environmental movement for 40 years. But that market has been served and unfortunately the term “environmental products” brings up images of tie-died clothing, dirty dreadlocks and old birkenstocks. For sustainability to go
prime-time, it has to be modern. It has to be sexy. It has to be hip, not hippy.

The Convenience Factor. Only the most die-hard enviros will spend the hours of
research required to find an aesthetically workable yet environmentally friendly chair, shirt, renovation material etc… Most of us have good intentions but most of us don’t have a lot of time nor patience. Sexy, environmental solutions need to be convenient for us to locate and purchase.

So…TreeHugger was created to aggregate sexy environmental solutions into a large, daily updated, well categorized, easily searchable archive.

There’s a green revolution happening! We focus on the “YESes” out there and we keep it fun. We bring reports from the front-lines to the reader such that they get a solid green education and find it easier to change their lives
and inspire others to do the same. And in doing so, we support the many companies, people and non-profits that make up the sustainable industry.

How do the two overlap?

The cup isn’t of a high enough environmental standard yet that there is clear overlap with TreeHugger but our goal with new products/services that we develop is that they will be worthy of very high marks on TreeHugger and thus could be sold or marketed via a separate, clearly defined area on TreeHugger.

Our hope is that with advertising and some of my highly sustainable products that we can get TreeHugger to be self-sustaining financially. It has cost me a very significant investment of time and money to get it to this point and my hope is that in the next 6 months that we can get things to break-even and to start paying back my initial investment.

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